JAIPUR: Scientists of the BM Birla Planetarium here on July 1 reported the falling of pieces of a meteorite in village Pipalia Kalan in western Rajasthan’s Pali district. The rare fall of the meteorite occurred on the evening of June 20 in the field of a farmer, Prabhu Ram Chudhary. A spokesperson of the planetarium said specimens of the rocks fallen from the space had been brought to Jaipur by 4 team of scientists. Some of the pieces were collected by geologists of the Department of Mines and Geology in Jodhpur.
The villagers said around 8:30 pm on June 20 they heard a thundering roar from the northeast as if a dozen fighter planes were hovering over the area. Within seconds, there was a blinding flash of light before everything became quiet again. The intense light was seen as far away from Beawar town, about 40km from the fall site. The dumbstruck villagers, who hid in their houses, came out a couple of hours later to find a large pitch black stony object about a feet in diameter and weighing about 20kg lying in a two feet deep pit. The villagers found the object very cold on touching. A few drops of moisture had already condensed on it. Some curious young villagers broke the piece with iron hammer next morning but nothing was revealed to them except gunpowder like colored substance inside. The team of the Birla Planetarium, which visited the site to collect the specimen, found another stone from the Space in a nearby field smaller than the first one which was also broken by the villagers, The villagers told members of the (eam that there were three consecutive flashes of light that evening.
The spokesperson said millions of such objects are wandering in the space and whenever they are pulled into the earth’s atmosphere by the globe’s gravity, most of them are burnt up before reaching the ground. The phenomenon of burning of meteorites in the earth’s atmosphere is called “shooting stars” in common parlance.
However, rare instances like this one do occur when meteorites survive and fall on the earth surface. The spokesperson said the objects, rich in silicon and iron, are not as innocuous as they appear to be. A big chunk of meteorite can be more devastating than all the nuclear weapons put together, He said a meteorite of a few hundred to a few thousand tons hits the earth with devastating impact once in a lakh years.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 3, 1996
